MONROVIA, April 30, 2007 (Reuters).
Liberia's Senate has approved a $1bn iron ore
mining contract with the world's largest steel producer, Arcelor Mittal,
opening the way for the project to start, the government said yesterday.

Liberia's upper house of parliament approved the project in a special
session late on Friday, April 27, 2007, and the formal ratification was
announced on Monday, April 30, 2007 by Information Minister Lawrence
Bropleh. The lower house endorsed the project last week.

"This agreement
is a significant step. The contract is expected to create about three
thousand jobs for our people ... Mittal is a huge company and its
operation in Liberia will mean a lot for the people of this country,"
Bropleh said.

In a final formality, President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf was
now due to sign the agreement for it to be promulgated. Her government
last year renegotiated an initial Mittal agreement signed in 2005 with an
unelected interim administration, boosting the state's interest in the
deal and raising the investment from $900m.

A Mittal representative in
Liberia, who asked not to be named, welcomed the Senate approval. "We are
happy to hear this. We are waiting for this to be printed into a handbill
(formal document). But we think that it's a good step for everyone," he
said.

The 25-year deal signed in December gives Mittal the right to mine a
huge, high-quality ore body in northwest Liberia with reserves currently
estimated at 500 million tonnes of iron ore. The revisions to the accord
ensured the Liberian state would retain control of its main port of
Buchanan and a railway serving the mine, both of which had been awarded to
the steelmaker under the original agreement.

Liberia was the world's
fifth-biggest producer of iron ore before a 1989-2003 civil war which
killed some 200,000 people and devastated its infrastructure. Mining is
now expected to contribute to the impoverished nation's recovery. For
Mittal, iron-rich West Africa is of increasing strategic interest, partly
because of its geographical location. Last month, the company unveiled a
$1.2bn investment in an iron ore mine in nearby Senegal.

Mittal expects
the mining operations in Liberia, when fully under way, to generate some
2,500 jobs within the company, and 10 times that outside the company.
Unemployment among Liberia's 3.2 million population is around 80 percent.
The company said last month it expected the first iron ore from its new
Liberia mine within four years.